In the flatlands of Sampson County, North Carolina, before telephones connected isolated farms, neighbors communicated across miles using "hollers" — loud, melodic calls in falsetto that carried across open fields. Filmmaker Kier Cline captured this vanishing tradition in his 1978 documentary Welcome to Spivey's Corner.
Cline's film featured the National Hollerin' Contest, held annually starting in 1969 in the town of Spivey's Corner (current population 576). What began as a fundraiser for the volunteer fire department grew into a cultural phenomenon, drawing thousands of spectators and contestants from across the country.
Cline interviewed practitioners like 73-year-old Leonard Emanuel, who explained the origins: "Back then in them days, everybody hollered, just about the whole neighborhood. They'd get up of a morning, get out, feed up, one'd holler, other answer him back."
The documentary shows four types of hollers: distress calls for help, functional calls for animals or family, expressive hollers for pleasure, and communicative hollers to "touch base with another soul."
Three-time runner-up Sam Barber tells Cline, "My Dad hollered before me, you know. A way back then the most of the men hollered… That's the way they had a connection, you know, about over the neighborhood."
Previously:
• Watch this short documentary about the influential, experimental Black Mountain College
